I saw more political ads at the gym, and it seems clear that in Missouri the Democrats are planning to run on abortion and, even more confusingly, gay marriage. The gay marriage ads were being aired during a report about the healthcare emergency declared in NYC over monkeypox, which added a layer of irony to the situation.

There was absolutely nothing about the economy in the ads. I don’t agree with Marx that the economy is everything but I don’t believe it’s nothing either. If Dem voters seriously get motivated to vote by gay marriage at this point in time… I feel sad for them. Let’s see if they manage to resist this very basic manipulation trick.

What is the name of the politician who announced his presidential bid in 1979 with a call for an “open border project”?

It was Reagan, of course. And he delivered, creating the largest amnesty program for illegal immigrants in the history of this country.

As I always say, the difference between Reagan and Justin Trudeau is that Reagan let the insane out of asylums and Trudeau put them in government.

I want to recommend this beautiful essay about Waffle House. I’ve been once and didn’t enjoy the food or anything else but there must be something to the place if it inspired such beautiful writing.

The US policy towards China and Russia failed so badly because it’s Marxist in nature. Marxism is the belief that economic relations are at the root of everything. The economy is the basis, and everything else is the superstructure, i.e. an outgrowth of the economy.

The US leadership assumed that once China and Russia joined the market economy, they’d adopt the political and social structures that are the most hospitable to the markets. People will see that the material conditions of their lives are improving dramatically and will want to keep living well. So the theory went.

But Marx was wrong. He was right about some things but this central, core idea of Marxism is a mistake. Human beings easily throw away material well-being for other things. Russians don’t give a toss about the collapse of their material existence that they have experienced as a result of waging war. They are happy to sacrifice their material needs to the psychological need to feel insulted, unfairly persecuted, and misunderstood.

The economy is important but other things trump it easily. The US has delivered a deep wound to its own economy by exporting this unworkable theory and losing its manufacturing sector and its security while gaining zero friends internationally.